San Diego County Parcel-Based Fire Protection Analysis

County of San Diego/GIS

The County of San Diego has historically relied on independent fire districts and volunteer companies to provide fire and life safety protection. As a result of major wildfires in recent years, county officials have pursued a reorganization plan to create an administrative body that will efficiently coordinate response to emergencies, thereby improving service. This map shows approximate response times from existing fire stations at full implementation of the plan. It was used in a report to the Local Agency Formation Commission, which oversees administrative boundary changes.

An effective fire protection strategy will incorporate the premise that most people and assets are clustered near transportation infrastructure. That idea raised a question: What are the number and proportion of dwellings and other structures of value that can be reached in specific time frames? To help understand the answer, an analysis was prepared using a roads feature class from the County of San Diego Department of Public Works, the county assessor parcel dataset, and a node dataset from the City of San Diego. Some jurisdictions were not analyzed as shown by the off-white color. The ArcGIS Network Analyst extension was used to calculate the geometry of each response time polygon. The number and proportion of dwellings and structures were obtained by selecting those parcels with an improvement value greater than zero, whose geographic center lay within a specific response time polygon. Areas in gray were excluded. The results of the analysis demonstrate that, with proper coordination, emergency response from existing fire stations can improve service to these areas of the county.

Courtesy of County of San Diego/GIS.

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